Banning books attempts to erase them, but Bookleggers highlights Florida’s banned books list through blackout poems. Erasure poetry, or blackout poetry, is a poetic form in which a poet erases, crosses out, removes, cuts out, covers, retypes, or blacks out words from preexisting writing to create something new. Join Jasmine Respess (Editor-in-Chief of Islandia Journal and Founder of Penumbra Press) in “erasing” a collection of this school year’s most banned books to find new meaning for our communities, ourselves, and each other.
Some of 2026’s most banned books include:
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Sold by Patricia McCormick
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Instead of banning books, let’s blackout our beloved books together.
